The cleric has raised a very valid point in that the coalition is trying to create a sectarian rift between Shiites and Sunnis for its own purposes. Despite all that the failure of the coalition is there for all to see.
Cleric accuses coalition of “massacre”](Yahoo is part of the Yahoo family of brands.)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric has accused the United States and Britain of carrying out massacres of his fellow Arabs in Iraq and called for resistance to what he calls the occupation of the country.
Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, giving his Friday sermon in Beirut, also said Washington was trying to create sectarian strife in Iraq by suggesting that Shi’ites would cooperate with the occupation while Sunni Muslims were resisting it.
“The American massacres in Baghdad, Basra, Nassiriya and Najaf against Iraqis go under the slogan ‘liberating Iraq from its regime’,” Fadlallah said.
“The war by America, Britain and their allies on Iraq has uncovered the ugly face of arrogance in its crimes against civilians,” he added.
Iraq said on Thursday that the week-old conflict had caused more than 4,000 civilian casualties, including more than 350 dead. There was no independent confirmation of the figures.
Fadlallah said the United States was apologising for the civilian deaths as ‘mistakes’ just as Israel did after killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“Bombing civilians and then apologising for the ‘mistake’ is a method similar to that followed by the Zionist enemy who carries out massacres against Palestinian civilians and then talks about an unintentional mistake,” he said.
Fadlallah dismissed U.S. statements that the war was aimed at “liberating” Iraqis from their president, Saddam Hussein, and said Washington wanted to replace one “tyrant” it had imposed with another.
SECTARIAN STRIFE
He accused Washington of trying to fan the flames of sectarian strife in Iraq by suggesting that Shi’ites would help American and British troops in the war, and singled out U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for particular criticism.
“The U.S. Defence secretary said yesterday that Shi’ites in Basra ‘are with us and will support us and the Shi’ites in Baghdad number three million and they will help us enter Baghdad’,” he said.
“Shi’ite Muslims are the ones who bore freedom in their historic conscience…thus Shi’ite Muslims were always against slavery imposed on them by tyrants and against foreign slavery imposed by the occupiers.”
“They cannot appease, be at peace with or defend the occupier and would not hand him their country and fate to meddle with and control it,” he added.
Shi’ites make up an estimated 60 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, who include Sunnis, Kurds and Christians.
Saddam has packed the government with his Sunni co-religionists during his three decades in power, put down several Shi’ite uprisings and purged holy cities of Shi’ite scholars and clerics who opposed him.
Shi’ites in southern Iraq rose against Saddam after the 1991 Gulf War, but were crushed when the U.S.-led forces that had ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait failed to provide the support they had expected.